August 18, 2016 School Board Meeting

It's been a while since I wrote a blog. There were some important issues I felt I needed to give my opinion on and explain more about. Every year we are presented a safety bussing plan. With busy roads and canals it's not safe for kids to walk to school, so they are bused to school. There are eight bus routes, one of them a special needs bus. Approximately 450 kids ride the bus to school. 

Probably the biggest issue discussed was the change in the school lunch program. The district was informed about the time school started that our district didn't qualify for the free breakfast and snack break anymore. Amy Dye came to our meeting to explain the situation and answer questions. This issue is very complicated and I think will be hard to change for the better. I think the biggest underlying problem is the nationally mandated wellness program guidelines. In other words many of the kids don't like the meals that the cooks are required to serve. There are two parts for a district to qualify for free breakfast. The first part is a majority of the students in the district need to qualify for the free or reduced meals. Amy hadn't gone through all the forms yet, but numbers were coming in around only 40% qualifying, instead of the needed 60%. If these numbers are correct it would indicate the community is better off financially than in the past. Another part of qualifying for the program is, the kids who qualify for the free and reduced meal prices need to actually eat the meals. I asked her how many kids eat in the high school. She said the day before only 47 kids out of about 250 ate lunch. Kids either bring a lunch, go home, or go to town to eat. With the requirement for many to pay for breakfast now, only 37 kids ate breakfast in the elementary, out of 200 kids. By these numbers the cooks won't be near as busy as in past years, which brings up another issue. With low meal participation and no longer having the funding to provide an afternoon snack for the elementary kids, someone will probably end up losing their job. The problem is what can be done to change all of these issues. Closing campus, not allowing students to leave during lunch was suggested. I don't think it's a good idea for kids to hurry down to Blackfoot or up to Shelley to eat, for safety reasons, but I don't support closing campus. I don't think closing campus would solve the problem, and I don't like to take away their freedom. If parents are okay with their kids leaving school to eat, I'm not going to tell them they can't. 

I'm am mostly concerned about not having a snack break in the elementary. With our four day schedule with long school days, kids will get hungry. We heard that in at least some classes crackers and other snacks have been donated. On the surface this seems like a good idea, but in the long run there might be problems. Remember what I said about the nationally mandated wellness policy, well the snacks brought into the school though good intentioned, probably don't meet the wellness policy guidelines. I will call them the food police, whoever comes to the district to verify district compliance to the wellness program, could find out about these good intentioned snacks and find our district out of compliance. If they do find us out of compliance the food police can withhold our funding until the situation is corrected. 

Another problem with this whole issue is the stigma of the students knowing who the free and reduced meal kids are. Most likely many parents won't want to pay for breakfast for their kids, so mostly the kids who would or could eat breakfast are the ones who get a reduced or free meal. Will some of the kids who really need to eat school breakfast choose not to now?

It was decided to form a committee of parents and others to try and figure out some kind of solution. April volunteered to represent the board on the committee. I thanked her for volunteering. I sure can't see a way to solve this. I hope they come up with something. 

The dress code and cellphone policy was discussed. I think the dress code is followed pretty good. The school has a procedure that makes sense. I would encourage parents to make sure their kids are properly dressed before they go to school. The cellphone problems are harder to resolve. In some classes last year teachers permitted their students to look things up on their phones. When phones are being used for good, they can also easily be used to cheat. This year every high school class should have access to a chromebook, to look up whatever they need. So there shouldn't be any reason for a student to use their phone during class. The teachers give the student a zero on any test or quiz they are caught cheating on. It was suggested we could ban cellphones from school. I'm not sure how we could do this, even if we could, should we? I personally think kids need to keep their phones in their pockets, or some other secure place. If they are caught cheating the penalty should be severe. But much like the closed campus issue, I don't support banning phones from the school. I think some parents believe strongly that they want their kids to have access to a phone. I felt that way when my kids were in high school. 

We talked about the extra-curricular stipends. The c team and seventh grade coaches are not compensated for their coaching. At times it's hard to get coaches and hard to keep them very long. The other coaching stipends haven't increased for several years. Cuts were made when the state reduced our funding. Even though stipend increases or changes aren't in the budget, I think we need to make some improvements. We added girls soccer a few years ago, and likely will add boys soccer. So we found money to pay for their coaches, can't we do something for our other coaches? We were also told we don't pay quite as much as other similar sized districts. We will talk about it again next month. I think at a minimum we should pay our c team and seventh grade coaches again, and raise the pay to some degree for the other coaches this year, and look at the budget again next year and potentially raise them more. 

The gender identity bathroom and locker room issues was discussed again. It was determined putting new signs on the individual school bathrooms would solve this issue for now. I did hear since the meeting that a federal judge blocked the new policies from going into affect. Hope his judgment lasts.

The needs survey was discussed some. More work needs to be done to come up with the questions to ask. 

Superintendent and school board goals were discussed. To be honest I didn't take many notes on this topic. Many of the goals are similar as other years. The board talked about needing to understand the budget better and getting some training. We would like to be more involved with the planning of what school improvement projects get done each year. The board will also plan on having many more work sessions, before the board meeting. The needs survey and finding was to increase elective class options is also a board goal. 

A new blower was installed to replace the old one in the elementary. The actual boiler will be replaced, hopefully early next spring once it warms up. The district is putting out bids to repair the leaky elementary roof. I think the repairs will be done during harvest break. It was also decided to leave the harvest break the same as planned. 

The last thing discussed was the school board convention in November. This year it's in Boise, at the Boise Center downtown. Much better location than the old hotel. Our November board meeting will be held there. All the rest of the board plans to attend. I'm still not 100% sure if I will go. I have long meetings the week before and the week after the school board convention. If I go to the school board meeting it will require me being gone for 15 out of 21 days. I will probably end up going, especially since we are going to hold our board meeting too. Some months get pretty crazy with meetings. 

Well I have written plenty, probably more than plenty. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know. If you want to be involved with the school lunch committee, contact Mr. Tubbs. Thank you, Brian 

May 12, 2016 School Board Meeting

I missed writing a blog last month. There wasn't a lot of business and I have been gone a lot. There wasn't a lot of business at this meeting either, but I wanted to express my thoughts on some things. I will get to it a bit later. 

The first thing I want to do is thank everyone that supported our Supplemental Levy. The levy money will really help with our technology needs. We soon will be the only district in the county with a one to one device for each student. I really hope the time will come where we won't need to ask for any more Supplemental Levies. At least we were able to lower the amount substantially.

The first matter of business was the resignation of Carla Reeves. She will be teaching next year in Shelley. I know she will be missed. I wish her the best in her new position in Shelley. We also approved the hiring of five new teachers. Patrice Williams 2nd grade, Sarah Bates 4th grade, Elizabeth Grosbeck 5th grade, Tracy Messick MS English, and Nicole Hopkins Special Education. Darren Jolley will also move to MS Social Studies. These teachers all have local ties. I'm glad the district was able to hire such a good group of teachers. 

We then had a long discussion about the possibility of bringing back humanities courses. Mr. Tubbs has heard that the state is going to change the current highly qualified certification teacher requirements. We used to have drama for example, but when they changed the requirements, drama had to be dropped because the teacher wasn't highly qualified. Hopefully this will change so more electives could be offered. I don't know how soon we will know if, or how this will change. 

There is a strong desire by some to start a band and choir program. A few years ago this was tried, but in the end it didn't work out very well and when the funding was cut from the state, the music program was dropped. There were some patrons in attendance who spoke in favor of starting a music program. Other board members said they have heard from several patrons who would like the district to offer band again. Nobody in my zone has indicated any desire to start band, at least not to me. I wish there was a way to find out how many kids would sign up and stay in band. If band was started the district would probably require a humanities credit, which would be just one semester, for graduation. Several years ago when there was a successful band program our class sizes were larger, and there were less requirements for graduation. With smaller classes, band students would need to stay in band throughout high school. As you can tell I'm not convinced a band program would be successful now. But my biggest concern is how to fund a full time music teacher and maintain the funding indefinitely. In the past the funding came from a certified teaching position. All our teaching positions are currently filled. One thing that was done before is having one less teacher in a grade that had less students. I don't think it was very easy to move teachers around so much to accommodate the changing class sizes. We do have one class of about 47 students. If we had an open teacher position, which we don't, would it be okay to only have two teachers in this grade, so there would be more students in each of the two classes? If a position opened up, I'm not sure if this would be a good option.

Another idea suggested by other board members was to use some of our Contingency Fund. We currently have over $800,000 in this account. This money is set aside as a savings account. Our accountant has recommended we maintain a minimum of at least two months of our operating budget. As long as I've been on the board our contingency has been pretty close to this amount. I asked the business manager how long it took to build the fund up to this level. She said when she started, I can't remember for sure how long ago she said, but around 30 years ago, the Contingency Fund was around $700,000. So this fund may go up and down a little over time, but stays close to the same. I made it very clear during this meeting that I will not support funding a music teacher out of our Contingency Fund. I was definitely in the minority over not wanting to use this fund. Next month will be our budget meeting, where all our projected funding and expenses will be presented to us. They also estimate where our Contingency fund will end up. There is no guarantee that our funding will continue to improve or even drop in the future. Mr. Tubbs was asked to discuss with the management team how we might go forward with a music program. Our district has done a very good job operating with a conservative budget. I think it would be irresponsible to start a band program without a secure plan to fund it.

Mr. Tubbs talked about the district funding. But as I said they will present the budget for our approval next month. He also talked about the Leadership Premium Plan. This year every certified teacher earned the premium. The state doesn't like how we allow every teacher the opportunity to earn the same premium. They changed it for next year. They raised the minimum amount from $850 to $900, but the catch is the state won't fund the extra $50. So if we want to maintain our program the same, we will have to come up with the extra $50 for each premium earned. We are going to continue the program the same as in the past. Some teachers were asked to be there to tell us how they earned their premium. They truly work for the little extra money, and I sure wouldn't want to purposely exclude anyone. 

Well that is all that was discussed. If you want to, let me know what you think about the challenges of starting a music program. It's not a simple decision. I played in the band from the fifth grade through the first part of my senior year.  I enjoyed my time in band until my senior year. We had a new teacher that was terrible and the program struggled. She would literally degrade and swear at anyone over the littlest things. I refused to listen to her do things like that, so I quit. I do think it's hard to find the right person to teach band, which is another concern. 

Thank you. I welcome your comments, or input. Brian 

March 17, 2016 School Board Meeting

I guess if I wanted to title this blog with something, it would be the Supplemental Levy request that almost wasn't, but I will get to that later. 

The board meeting started with the many achievements of the winter sports and activity programs. The wrestlers that made it to state did well with a sixth, third and first place finish. The girls basketball team was third in a tough district, with some upset wins along the way. The boys basketball team won state for the third year in a row and the seventh time in ten years. They also won the district championship for the tenth year in a row. The cheerleaders won all four categories of competition at districts. BPA did very well, and so did the FCCLA at their district competitions. 

Four resignations were accepted by the board. Kathy Beckwith, Marcele Tanner, Hallie Crockett, and Katy Killpack. Everyone accept Katy is retiring after many years of service to our district. I wish them well in their retirement, and thank them for all they did for the students of the Firth school district. 

A short update from our last meeting was given about the boys soccer program. Mr. Harrison said fourteen boys paid to play last year, and their budget was only $100 in the hole, instead of the much higher amount we were told last month. The district also hired another coach that will help with both the boys and girls soccer programs. Having another coach should help a lot. The boys are also working on figuring out fundraisers to raise the money they need for this years program. 

We then had a long discussion about the idea of asking for a new Supplemental Levy. The $230,000 two year levy expired this year. We recently had a two hour or so long work meeting to go over the Strategic Planning Committee's Supplemental Levy recommendation. I have thought a lot about this since the idea of continuing a levy was first brought up. I so much wanted not to have to be one of the around 100 districts in the state who depend on Supplemental Levies to survive. The state is restoring more of the school districts maintenance and operation budgets. They intend to fund us back to the level we were in 2009 before the recession hit the state budget, but this increase won't come close to providing enough funds for the technology needed. The original request was for $200,000, less than our last levy, so taxes would go down a little. During our work meeting I think there was somewhat of a consensus that a lessor amount would work to cover most of what they wanted. Since our work meeting I had thought of several more questions that I then emailed to Mr. Tubbs. Mr. Tubbs found out no other district in our county is anywhere close to having one to one devices for their students. Shelley stated they only have 60 in the whole district with the hope of buying another 100 this year. One main reason the other districts are so far behind on getting this technology is their lack of bandwidth in their buildings to provide the needed bandwidth to run all the devices. Firth is fortunate to have all the bandwidth we need. I think we received a grant that helped this process along. Kind of satisfying that we lead the county districts in being prepared to provide one to one technology to our district students. After many comments from the board about the needed technology and other district needs, I made the motion to request a $130,000 two year Supplemental Levy. The levy would be used to buy chromebooks, chromebook charging stations, projectors, and other technology needs. It would also be used to help support our current second IT Tech. We were told without these funds it would be very hard to fund the second position, and without the Tech our district couldn't keep up on maintaining all our technology. Technology is moving school districts to e-books instead of paper text books. The election will be May 17th, the same as the states primary election. 

That was pretty much all that we discussed at our meeting. Now to explain my first statement. The next day I received a text from the Morning News asking me if we had voted to ask for a levy. I answered explaining the amount we asked for and what it would be used for. This was about 2:45 on Friday. A few minutes later I got a call at home from the county election office. The election officer asked if I knew the district had until 5:00 that day to have all the proper paperwork submitted for the levy. I'm not sure why, but I was the first one she had called. I'm not usually around that time of day. Well I called Mr. Tubbs and asked him about it. He thought we had another week to submit the information. He said he would get to work on it, to get it sent in. I received another text, telling me basically the same thing I heard from the county office, other than it said there would need to be a board signature. I got thinking maybe I, as vice chairman,  would have to sign the paper, since Casey works in Pocatello and probably wouldn't be available in time. I called Mr. Tubbs and asked if he needed my help, and offered to do so. It was about 3:40 by then. I had an appointment at 4:00, but decided I better do what I needed to do to help out.  I went to the elementary office where Mr. Tubbs was working on the forms. The county had emailed him the ballot papers from Aberdeen's last levy, so he could easily edited it to the information we needed. Julie has been sick so she wasn't in the loop as to what needed done. After doing the necessary editing Mr. Tubbs tried to print the paperwork. No matter what he tried it wouldn't work. As the time past, he decided we should go to the district office and try it there. By this time it was about 4:40. He had to do the edits all over again. He got the edits done and tried to print the forms, it still didn't work. I looked at the printer and it said to insert legal paper. It then dawned on Mr. Tubbs that was probably the same problem we were having at the elementary. After adding the right paper, and finally getting them printed, Mr. Tubbs realized he didn't have the fax number. I looked it up and he faxed it in, but a couple minutes later he found out the county didn't get the paperwork. He then realized he needed to dial 8 first. He then sent it in the right way and it went through. He was on the phone with the county when it came through and she timed stamped the forms. I think the time was about 4:58 when she stamped it.

The significance of this is if it would have been after 5:00 it would have been past the deadline. This is the last date an election can be held to receive the funding for the  next school year. It would have been hard to afford our second ITperson. It would also have been embarrassing for the board and administration to have missed the deadline. Now it will be up to the district patrons to decide if they are willing to support our levy request. I think it's a good thing I have tried to be transparent and willing to communicate with those who want to communicate with me. If I hadn't responded to the first text when I did, the deadline would have passed and we would have been out of luck until next year. 

Well this turned out very long. I have also been out of town at a dairy meeting since Sunday morning. If anyone has questions about the Supplemental Levy, let me know. I personally determined to maintain our progress toward technology and to afford the much needed Tech, we need this levy. There are other areas the district will need to spend additional money on. I don't think it would be a good idea to overspend our M&O budget on technology. Thanks, Brian

February 17, 2016 Blog Update

I thought I would give a short update about the soccer program that I talked about in my blog. I have received some new information and wanted to reassure soccer supporters that I support your efforts to make the boys soccer program a success. 

I heard there were 14 boys playing soccer last year instead of the 12 we heard at the meeting. They had numerous fundraisers with a lot of parental involvement. Their efforts to fully fund the program fell short, but not by very much at all. Only one player graduated from last years team, and there are five freshman that are planning on playing this year. They are practicing every Saturday, to get ready for the season. It takes a lot of work to start a new program, and from what I heard today the boys and their parents are doing their best to make boys, and girls soccer for that matter a success. I'm sorry if I gave anyone the impression that I was not supporting your efforts. Good luck to both teams this year. Thank you, Brian

February 11, 2016 School Board Meeting

Since I missed the last two meetings it's been quite awhile since I wrote a blog. I would have made it to the last meeting if they hadn't changed the date. I don't like missing meetings, because it's hard to find out what happened and I like to be involved in the discussions. There was board training before the board meeting. I was traveling home from the California Ag Equipment Show, so I missed the training.

The meeting started out with a Strategic Planning  Committee report given by Mr. Gee. The report was all about the technology needs of the district. Student education is moving away from paper textbooks, to personal tablets. The district has quite a few chromebooks. They are an inexpensive, what you might call a mini laptop. They work off wifi. There are controls and monitoring of what they can access on the Internet. They can't store data directly on them. The students use an Internet based program to save their information on. To be able to eventually move away from most textbooks, the district will need a lot more chromebooks. There is also a need for projectors, whiteboards, teacher laptops, chromebook carts (to plug them into) and the need to fund a second IT person to support all the district's technology. The cost estimate for all of these  needs is just shy of $200,000 a year over the next two years. I asked what the ongoing costs estimates would be. He didn't have that information available. It was asked how much direct funding we get now from the state for technology. Mr. Tubbs said somewhere around $34,000. 

The discussion moved into the idea of continuing a Supplemental Levy to fund our district technology needs. We currently have around a $230,000 levy. It was recommended by the Planning Committee to ask for a levy to support this technology plan. Other district needs-like facility maintenance issues-could be funded with other funds. We spent quite a bit in the last couple years upgrading computer labs. Now it looks like the direction is to move away from the labs to the  chromebooks. Without the state providing a substantial amount more funding  that we could use for technology in future years, it looks like we would have to maintain some level of Supplemental Levy funding. I haven't liked the idea of being a district that depends on supplemental tax funding. We are going to have a Board Work Meeting on February 26th at 4:00, to go over everything so we know what direction we would like to go. We won't vote on anything until our next board meeting on March 10th. We need more information to be able to make the decision. 

Some more thoughts I have on this issue. Paper textbooks, in at least most subjects, have been used for many years  before they are replaced. From what we learned, chromebooks would need to be replaced every three to four years. Textbook software for the chromebooks is thought to be cheaper than paper books, but not as much as you would think. I would also guess that since this software is supported by a textbook company, they would have some kind of constant updating and replacement program. No keeping the same thing for ten or more years anymore. How expensive might this be? Will the state recognize the needs of districts to move toward more technology and appropriately fund it? I'm actually in Boise today for a dairy meeting. There is a dinner  with some of our state legislators. I'm going to try and talk to our county legislators if they are there tonight. We have to decide if we want to go forward with a new levy by our March board meeting to get it on the ballot in time for next year's  funding. Will the patrons of the district support a continuation of a levy? Is it right to limp along and do the best we can to provide the needed technology? 

I did get a chance to talk to the Idaho House Chairman  Bedke today. I asked him about funding as he was leaving the meeting. He said the priorities are teacher funding and the Maintenance and Operations Budget. Technology  funding is probably third in priorities. Their goal is to increase our M&O funding back to pre recession levels. If they accomplish this level of funding, we will get some additional funding, but not near as much as we need to fund this proposal.

Well to move on. We also talked about the status of the Boy's Soccer Program. They were given two years to prove the program would be viable. From my assessment, so far it doesn't look very good. It is supposed to be self funding. Last year it fell short, the amount of the shortfall was unclear. We were also told  when the proposal was made, they would have 18-20 boys ready to play. They had twelve. It takes eleven to make a team. They don't seem to have near as much parental support as the Girl's Program  had when they were going through the trial period. I asked how many they anticipate will play this year. They will try and find out. Unless things look better after another year and they step up and pay the costs they committed to, I will have a hard time supporting the program's continuation. 

After some policy reviews and a little more public comment, we moved into executive session. We talked about personnel evaluations. After the executive session, we voted to extend Mr. Tubbs contract for another year, for a total of three years. 

This ended up a lot longer than I thought it would. I don't take asking for Supplemental Funding  lightly. We will have a lot to discuss at our Work Meeting. I had been optimistic we wouldn't need another levy. But to properly educate our kids, it's looking like we can't get there with our current amount of funding. Let me know if you have any ideas, and what you think about it. If the board knows the community is behind us, it will make it a lot easier to go forward. If you have any other questions or comments let me know. Thank you, Brian